


the scarlet boy king and the whipping boy

by pyrality (orphan_account)



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Character Study, M/M, Relationship Study, thoughtful
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-11
Updated: 2014-04-11
Packaged: 2018-01-18 23:32:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1446988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/pyrality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>It scares Midorima sometimes, when he can see starlight instead of sunlight in the shorter teen's gray eyes. Takao has unnerving thought patterns, and a way of digging underneath his skin and burying himself beneath Midorima's veins.</p>
  <p>(Moments like these-- it's like waiting for something to go off, an alarm, blaring and loud and startling, even if it was expected.)</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	the scarlet boy king and the whipping boy

**Author's Note:**

> In history, a whipping boy is a boy who is raised with the prince to be his childhood friend. A whipping boy served as a motivator for the prince as the boy would be punished if the prince did not do his duties or did poorly in his studies or behaved inappropriately. It’s more of just me being fancy w/ the title rather than anything super duper important in the story.

Summer is always blistering hot and a small blessing at least, is that Midorima's house is well-ventilated and the backyard is in shade. His parents leave him alone once Takao comes over, letting them have the spacious green lawn to themselves. They use the fans his parents leave them, and even with ice cream and cold soda in a nice box within their reach, the both of them are still damp with sweat in their tanktops. It's still nice, nonetheless, with the summer heat swarming around them and the sky blue and bright, and crickets and cicadas chirping in the distance, and Midorima thinks of red hair and the back of a pale hand that absently wiped sweat off of his upper lip.  
  
Takao is... more quiet during these moments. It scares Midorima sometimes, when he can see starlight instead of sunlight in the shorter teen's gray eyes. Takao has unnerving thought patterns, and a way of digging underneath his skin and burying himself beneath Midorima's veins.  
  
(Moments like these-- it's like waiting for something to go off, an alarm, blaring and loud and startling, even if it was expected.)  
  
“Did you date him?” Takao asks, soft, warm, and lazy. He's lying on his back with his head by Midorima's thigh, a Popsicle stick in his mouth, a cold soda can pressed to his neck in one hand and a fan in the other, resting against the hardwood.  
  
Midorima knows he could throw this into semantics, but there's hardly any point. Takao knows there's only one person he ever had an interest prior to himself. Playing word games is dangerous anyway, when Takao's eyes are sharp like the edges of a knife and bright like fluorescent lightbulbs in the dark of night.  
  
(It is strange that Midorima has come to think of Takao as dangerous when he has spent three years yearning to touch a boy cleansed in fire and strife. The truth of it is that Midorima is afraid of losing Takao, because the other boy has become precious to him in ways that make his heart ache and his fingers tingly.)  
  
Midorima stops, starts, stops again. He pulls his glasses off and rubs at the bridge of his nose. “I’m unsure, frankly," he says finally.  
  
The slant of Takao's mouth twitches and he frowns, brow pinching subtly. “Unsure?” he repeats.  
  
“Yes,” Midorima deliberates, raising his glasses up an angle to peer at them for smudges. His throat feels tight when he speaks, “We were… somewhat involved. Though I hesitate to call it anything more than teenage foolishness.”  
  
(They do need to talk about this-- they _do,_ but Midorima suddenly feels like he would rather be asleep or talking to Kise or someone else just as intolerable to get away from this.)  
  
“That’s so typically poetic of you," Takao answers after a moment, a hint of sharpness in his tone, and Midorima feels sick in his stomach.  
  
“Why do you ask at all?” He drops his hands and tucks his glasses against the hem of his shorts. He stares down at his hands, at how big they are, the grooves of the lines striking across his palm, and remembers both Akashi and Takao have called his fingers "elegant" at least once. “Does it bother you?”  
  
Takao snorts, rolls over onto his side so that his face is turned away from Midorima's view. “That you had sex with Akashi?" he asks, tone flippant, an undertone of a humorless laugh in his voice. "Yeah.”  
  
Midorima flushes, snapping his gaze down to glare at Takao's form. “Don’t be ridiculous! We were fifteen-- we did not have  _sex_!”  
  
(They didn't. The most they did was steal sloppy, hurried kisses at the corners of stairwells, but Midorima still dreams, sometimes, of Akashi's fingertips on his jaw, and the slight curve of his happy smile and his half-lidded warm eyes. But he doesn't hold any misconceptions; Akashi never held his hand, never leaned against his shoulder on train rides home. Akashi was always tentative in his affection, and then miserly sparing by the third year of Teiko.)  
  
“Ah," he hums, and now there's that familiar humor Midorima is used to hearing back in his tone, "So you  _can_ say that word.” He glances over his shoulder at him, grinning.  
  
“Is there anything else you want me to say while we’re at it?” the green-haired asks dryly, unamused and feeling hot in his face.   
  
Takao narrows his eyes and licks his lips, and Midorima thinks about kissing him and ending the conversation.  
  
(It would be easy. After having been with Takao for six months, he knows how to distract him.)  
  
“So you didn’t bang him," Takao hums, rolling back over onto his back. He spreads his arms out, setting the soda can standing up still loosely in his grasp as he looks up at Midorima. "Does that mean he’s never seen you lose your composure?” he asks innocently.  
  
Midorima flushes hot, reddening, and looks away. His ears are warm. “Takao, this is irrelevant now.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Takao says, slightly sharper than Midorima is used to. He sits up, back to Midorima when the teen startles to look at him. “Whenever I see you with him, you look at him like… he’s someone special still.”  
  
Midorima feels himself tense and he fidgets with his fingers, opening and closing his fist against his thigh. “I wouldn’t want to be untruthful,” he says after a moment, licking at his dry lips. There’s a knot in his throat. "I do still carry some… weight for him,” he murmurs, and the words fall heavy between them, "I imagine it’s something more like guilt and responsibility rather than the kind of emotion you are concerned about.”  
  
“Shintarou,” Takao says, stilted, and Midorima hates that Takao’s using his full first name only makes him think of the scarlet-haired boy king. He dips his head forward, back curling, and Midorima sees the shaky twitch of Takao’s hand he reaches behind himself to scratch at the nape of his neck. “I really like you, okay? I’m allowed to be jealous.”  
  
Midorima stares at his back, blank, before he smiles slightly to himself. “Yes,” He leans forward, curling a hand to Takao’s waist as he kisses the nape of his neck. "You are very much entitled to that right, Kazunari."


End file.
